item details
Overview
This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).
Tattooed Samoan is part of an internationally significant collection of photographs made by New Zealander Thomas Andrew, who lived in Sāmoa from 1891 to 1939. He was involved in a range of commercial enterprises but his photography is evidence of his engagement with Sāmoan society and his reliance on the indigenous people and culture for his livelihood.
Today we can appreciate Andrew’s photography both for its ethnographic and historical value and in many cases its artistic value. Most of his subject choices reflect his core business of producing postcards for the tourist and armchair traveller or illustrations for international magazines and publications. His portfolio includes landscapes, dwellings and public buildings, community events and ceremonies, and indigenous practices such as games and fishing. He took many studio portraits, most being of women and members of the Sāmoan leadership and social elite. He also captured significant events during the German and New Zealand colonial administrations in Sāmoa.
Andrew’s Tattooed Samoan is a rare studio portrait of a man posed to provide the best view of his tatau (tattoo). At this time, young men were marked with the tatau to signify their commitment to serving the matai (chiefs) of their family and village. Receiving the extensive tatau was a ritual of pain and endurance, a serious undertaking performed by specialist practitioners.
As far as we know, this photograph is one of only three images of tattooed people attributed to Andrew and the only one in a studio setting. Although it is a beautiful image, by obscuring the man’s face and choosing to focus on the tatau on his thighs and buttock, Andrew creates an ethnographic tension often detectable across his wide-ranging body of work and indeed in many collections of colonial photography. Is this an ethnographic document, the creation of some kind of specimen, an artistic work or an image to be sold as an exotic curiosity? Tattooed Samoan is perhaps all these things, and valuable for this reason. It reminds us of the possibilities and limitations of the photographic record and the context and circumstances of image creation. It also raises questions about the relationship between photographer and subject, observer and observed, and indigenous and non-indigenous.
Sean Mallon
Samoan tatau (tattoo)
Tatau, from where the English word ‘tattoo’ comes, is still practised in Sāmoa today. In this studio portrait, a man shows the back section of his pe'a, a heavy tatau that starts at the waist and finishes below the knee.
Pe‘a are made up of fine line-work, motifs, and geometric patterns. They are created using a set of handmade tools consisting of ‘au (tattoo combs) and a sausau (a short wooden rod or mallet). Receiving a pe‘a is a rite of passage and symbolises the recipient’s strength and resilience.